


This Is (K)not What It Looks Like

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Awkwardness, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Oblivious Stiles, Pining Derek, Rope Bondage, Shibari, just botched self-bondage and a timely rescue, sadly no smut lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 03:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15404157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: Stiles was torn between pulling a muscle trying to reach that last knot again and giving it all up as a bad job and calling Scott for a shamefaced rescue when he heard the distinctive sound of his apartment’s creaky front door opening.Fuck, heknewhe shouldn’t have given spare keys to so many people if he ever wanted to practice self-bondage without getting caught out.





	This Is (K)not What It Looks Like

**Author's Note:**

> my first shibari fic!!!! it's about damn time, lmao, i've been thinking about my various shibari ideas for months now. (is it weird that only 1 of my maybe 5 shibari fic ideas actually has anything to do with sex? lmaooo) but yeah so here it is, 2.6k of awkward and failure with some cuteness thrown in XD

Maybe Stiles should’ve tried this in front of a mirror. That might’ve been a better idea, but his charger cord wasn’t long enough to get his laptop onto the bathroom counter and he definitely needed the tutorial video to make this happen.

Not that it was happening now, even with it. It was sort of very much not happening the way it was supposed to.

Shit, he definitely did something wrong here. The rope was tighter across his chest than it was on the vlogger in the video and the confluence of knots in the back had ridden up between his shoulder blades where he could no longer reach it. He was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen.

One of his half-hitches had wandered and was pressing into the corner of his armpit uncomfortably and his fingers were starting to feel tingly. That was probably a bad sign but he still couldn’t reach the last knot he’d tied to _untie it._

Yeah, Stiles definitely had not thought this through all the way. This might’ve been a bad idea all around.

Stiles was torn between pulling a muscle trying to reach that last knot again and giving it all up as a bad job and calling Scott for a shamefaced rescue when he heard the distinctive sound of his apartment’s creaky front door opening.

 _Fuck,_ he _knew_ he shouldn’t have given spare keys to so many people if he ever wanted to practice self-bondage without getting caught out.

His hopeless struggle redoubled but all that did was wriggle the knots further out of his reach and he couldn’t rotate his shoulder to bring his arm back down and he really couldn’t feel his fingers now and the intruder wasn’t even in the room yet but this was already on the list of Stiles’ most humiliating moments.

The only thing that could make this worse was if—

“What are you _doing?_ ”

—if it was Derek.

“Hey,” Stiles said, dragging the syllable out for what was probably an obnoxiously long time, but there wasn’t much else he could say when he was sitting alone in his living room tangled up in bondage gear he clearly did not know how to use properly.

Nothing he said could make this less incriminating. He just had to hope that Derek wouldn’t kinkshame him too hard or, you know, jump straight out the window in his haste to get away from Stiles’ weird kinky incompetence.

And Derek was still staring at him, fuzzy eyebrows in full on judgment mode. Okay, so damage control was needed here.

“This is not what it looks like!”

Maybe not the best or most convincing thing he could’ve come out with, but it was something at least.

Derek’s eyebrows got twice as judgmental.

“Really?” he said. “Because it looks like you put the rope through the wrong bight and got your working lines knotted up and stuck. And where are your shears? You don’t have claws, Stiles. You shouldn’t do this sort of thing without some kind of safety tool on hand. I mean, no one should, really, but you _especially._ ”

Stiles froze. Not that he had a huge range of movement available to him at that point, but he stopped fighting it in favor of gaping at Derek. He was pretty sure “bight” wasn’t a common knowledge sort of term. Was it? Unless Derek had done some work on boats or something because sailors did lots of rope-tying, and that was more likely than the alternative, right? Surely Derek didn’t do—

“Seriously, your fingers are turning funny colors and that’s a bad sign,” Derek said. “Do you want me to cut you out?”

“Oh god, please don’t, these ropes cost me forty bucks,” Stiles said faintly.

Derek rolled his eyes but he was already coming forward into Stiles’ space and kneeling down at his back. He reached around to press pause on the instructional video that Stiles had long since lost track of, and then his hands were on Stiles’ skin.

Stiles was suddenly very, very glad that he hadn’t opted to try this shirtless. Since it was just a test run to see if shibari was really for him, he’d gone with one of his more form-fitting t-shirts, and while that had been just fine for the actual bondage thing, it wasn’t nearly enough to keep Derek’s hands from feeling like brands as they ran across his shoulders.

The first thing they did was pull the half-hitch away from Stiles’ armpit where it had been digging in pretty painfully. He ran his palms firmly along Stiles’ arm, getting blood flowing back to his extremities, and then followed the line over and back to where it was all tangled up.

Stiles couldn’t see anything Derek was doing but he could _feel_ it. He could feel the heat of Derek’s body at his back, solid and close. He could feel Derek’s breath on the back of his neck, the brush of Derek’s knuckles along his spine, the pressure of each pull on the rope that wrapped around Stiles’ chest.

He was almost painfully aware of all of it, like his senses were on high alert, and he was sure that Derek could hear his heartbeat going crazy with it.

Derek didn’t comment on that, though. He just worked at the ropes, tugging them looser bit by bit, and said, “These really cost you forty bucks? They’re not even the good ropes. You can get this quality for a lot cheaper. Or you could get better ropes for the same price.”

Stiles’ mouth went dry. That was confirmation that Derek was not, in fact, a sailor and _was,_ in fact, into bondage. Okay. Stiles didn’t quite know what to do with that information. (He knew what he _wanted_ to do with that information, but that was a stupid thing so he wasn’t going to do it. He really wasn’t.)

He cleared his throat.

“It was, uh, from the website that vlogger suggested,” he admitted. “I don’t know any other ones.”

Derek hummed. “I can get you some better sites.” He gave one more tug and the last of the wraps around Stiles’ chest loosened and fell away. “That is, if you still want to do rope work after this clusterfuck.”

Considering the way Stiles’ mouth was dry and his jeans were tight?

“If I can manage not to strangle myself next time,” he said gamely, “it might be worth another try. I’ll probably try a different harness though, since this one was so—”

He shifted around just in time to see Derek winding the rope around his hands, just like the vlogger did at the end of her videos. It was an easy, practiced motion, smooth and confident, like he’d done it a thousand times. Every coherent word in Stiles’ brain took a flying leap straight into his dick.

Derek’s lips quirked up into a smirk that had no right being sexy and smug at the same time like that, like he could smell every pheromone Stiles was emitting and knew exactly what was causing them, which was probably true.

Stiles cleared his throat again. “You’ve done this before.”

Derek’s smirk widened. “What gave it away?”

Stiles ignored that stupid question in favor of: “So you, like... _do_ this? For real?”

Derek neatly tied off the rope and laid it aside. Then he pulled Stiles’ laptop over without so much as a _by your leave,_ pulled up a new window, and started typing.

“Got into it in New York. There are a lot of kink clubs there,” he said, heedless of what hearing the words “kink club” out of his mouth might do to poor Stiles and his libido. “Not so many around here, unsurprisingly, so you might have some difficulties finding good classes and safe partners to work with.”

Stiles swallowed with some effort. “Do you have any?” he asked. “Partners to work with, I mean.”

Derek stopped typing for a moment to look at Stiles sidelong. “Some,” he finally said, fingers moving again. “A few casual friends I scene with now and then. Nothing committed.”

Stiles nodded. Repeatedly. Maybe a little too much nodding, but it was nod or acknowledge the sudden flare of jealousy at the thought of Derek with other people. Which was stupid because Derek wasn’t his in even the slightest kind of way and was therefore free to...to _scene_ with anyone he wanted to.

Stiles hoisted himself off the floor and onto his battered couch with a noncommittal noise but didn’t let himself say anything else. He snatched his rope up off the floor, busily looking it over to make sure it hadn’t been damaged by all his squirming. It was fine, of course it was. Restraining squirming people was sort of its entire purpose. But he needed something to focus on that wasn’t Derek apparently looking up high quality bondage materials on his laptop like that was a normal thing for them.

Derek finally pushed the laptop back in Stiles’ direction.

“You should get a couple of different lengths,” he said. “Different ties need more or less rope, and you don’t want to run out, or have twenty feet of rope to burn at the end. It’ll take some experimenting before you can estimate it.” He paused before adding, “And obviously, it’ll vary if you get a partner with a different build. The same tie would take more rope to do on me than it would on you. Just as an example.”

“Right,” Stiles said faintly.

He had bought the rope thinking of _being tied,_ imagining the feel of not-quite-uncomfortable restriction, the vague idea of being held together and secure. That had been the primary motivation. But now he was imagining it on Derek instead. He had seen Derek shirtless more than enough to picture clearly what his broad chest would look like crisscrossed with the rope in his hands, the way it would slide through his fingers as he laid it in place, feeling the hitch of Derek’s breath under his palms.

Derek was smirking again, damn it. “You don’t know which end of the rope you’d rather be on yet, do you?”

Stiles forced himself to roll his eyes, going for unaffected but probably failing. “To be fair,” he said, “doing it on myself means I’m on both ends. And apparently I’m bad at both."

With a snort of laughter, Derek pushed himself to his feet. “You’re not bad at it, Stiles. You’re just an amateur. You need someone to show you the ropes, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

Made reckless by the delicious image in his mind and the memory of Derek’s hands on him, Stiles threw out, “Someone like you?”

Derek raised both eyebrows this time. Then a slow smile spread across his face. “Maybe.”

It took a minute for that word to process. As soon as it did, Stiles blurted, “Wait, seriously? Oh wow, I really didn’t expect you to say yes to that.”

Derek’s smile faltered just a little bit. “Did you...not want me to?”

Stiles scrambled off the couch fast enough to trip over his own feet. Luckily, he did _not_ fall on his face, but it was a close thing. Instead he ended up nearly face-planting directly into Derek’s stomach, saved only by Derek’s quick reflexes in grabbing him by the shoulders to keep him mostly upright.

“No!” Stiles said quickly. “That’s not—I mean, yes, I totally want—Okay, look, pal, you cannot be surprised that _I’m_ surprised that you would want to do sexy things with me!”

For a few painfully long seconds, Derek just looked at him, mouth open a little bit and hands still tight around Stiles’ upper arms. Then he shook his head.

“Have I really been that subtle?” he asked. “Or are you just that oblivious?”

Stiles blinked at him. “Huh?”

This time, Derek rolled his eyes with his entire head. “Stiles, I’ve been flirting with you for like a year and a half! Usually you flirt back. Did you even notice or are innuendos really just your default mode of communication?”

“No and yes,” Stiles responded blankly, mind still preoccupied trying to comprehend the first half of what Derek had said. “Also, _what?_ ”

Derek sighed and let go of his hold on Stiles’ arms, which Stiles did not appreciate in the least. He ran fingers through his hair, head ducked down and the beginnings of a possible blush on his cheeks, and said, “I actually came over here with the intention of finally asking you out to dinner. The, uh, surprise bondage sort of threw me for a loop before I could.”

Stiles was still having serious doubts about the reality of the conversation currently taking place—this was outlandish and unbelievable enough to be a dream, right? A good dream for once?—but there was no way he was looking this gift horse in the mouth in the slim chances he was actually awake. He was grabbing this bull by the metaphorical horns and holding on for dear life.

“Do you still want to?” he asked, a little breathless. “After the surprise bondage thing and all the unbearable awkwardness?”

Derek glanced up at him and smiled. “More than ever.”

“Well, hot damn, let’s go! Dinner’s on me.”

Derek’s smile widened, way past what Stiles was used to seeing on his face and wow did that make his heart beat halfway out of his chest. “I asked you,” he said. “Doesn’t that mean I’m supposed to pay?”

“Maybe usually,” Stiles said, tossing his rope on the couch and shrugging. “But you sort of saved my life earlier. Or at least a few of my fingers. So I’m paying you back.”

“Maybe I want a different repayment.”

Stiles took in the way Derek’s smile had gone sly and raised his eyebrows. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

Derek put on an innocent face—not very effective when his grin was still threatening to break through. “Take a guess.”

Thrumming with the best kind of nerves, Stiles sauntered closer. And closer still. When Derek didn’t step back out of range, just kept watching him with that intensity in his eyes that always made Stiles go a little weak in the knees, he dug up every bit of courage he had and leaned in to press his lips against Derek’s.

Derek made a noise, a little hum that Stiles could _feel,_ and it was a thrill like nothing else to know that it was because of him. That he could make Derek sound like that. God, he wanted to wring every imaginable noise out of him.

But that was for _after_ dinner, hopefully. Stiles settled for kissing the hell out of him for the moment. He may not have much experience with rope tying, but he damn sure knew how to kiss, and by the time he drew back Derek was breathless and a little dazed.

“Do you consider my debt repaid?” Stiles asked, trying not to sound as smug as he was.

Derek had to clear his throat before speaking. “Yeah,” he managed. “Yeah, I think that just about covers it.”

“Then it’s dinner time,” Stiles said. “I’m still buying though, because I said so. Now let’s go. We can chat about bondage over our appetizers.”

Derek huffed a laugh but didn’t argue as Stiles took him by the hand, nor when Stiles laced their fingers together and squeezed. They left the rope where it was as Stiles towed Derek out the door, already talking a mile a minute about the tutorials he had watched and the forums he had read.

They would come back to it later.

**Author's Note:**

> [also on tumblr](http://clotpolesonly.tumblr.com/post/176199770566/maybe-stiles-shouldve-tried-this-in-front-of-a)


End file.
